When do you decide that enough is enough when shaping?
I always go through this agony when finishing a shape- seeing slight little bumps or hollows and trying to get them out, then seeing more. At a certain point I’m just moving the bumps around. I’ve never shaped a board I thought was perfect.
Another candidate for Swayloholic’s Anonymous.
Neither did I… And probably neither guys that are so much more experienced than me…
But I know for sure that I got better 1) when I started taking a lot of time trueing the outline after sawing it off and 2) when I started deciding: “I’m stopping now because leaving it as is will be better than trying to improve it and making it too thin/too narrow/too short/too …”
I’d like to know if any of you ever thought they had just shaped a perfect board?
When I hear my wife say, “aren’t you done with that thing yet? You’ve been playing with that for a week. Now go out and mow the lawn and wash the dog”.
**Great Question, and could be applied to woodworking as well. I’m not a shaper, but sit in as a student quite often and figure that your planner work and technique needs refining, so you leave the references w/o bumps. It sounds easy, but watching shapers who have thousands of boards under their belts give credence to the basic procedures. Bill Barnfield’s posts on rail bands give the ground work for these things. You’ve got to start with a good foundation to get the wanted results, otherwise you end up with something else than intended.**
Perfection does not exist.
Stop when you start seeing things other people can’t see. At first you need people around to tell you, “I don’t see it.” Later, you won’t need to hear somebody say it, but you’ll know it when you’ve reached that point, just the same.
Every decent craftsman is his/her own worst critic.
Doing cabinets and built-ins, I call it getting a case of “Cabinet Eye”. You spend however long working so close to the piece and constantly running your hands over it that you see/feel every little thing…then the angst sets in and you start obsessing…all the time knowing I’ve done everything possible to get it as perfect as I can.
Same with shaping…that’s when I step back, maybe have a beer, maybe take the board outside to get a different perspective, maybe have a critical but unbiased eye (surfing bud) look it over. Sometimes just put it in the rack and leave it for days/weeks/months then pull it out and glass it…
Then I get wobbles in the pin lines…
Give it the one day test; put it were you can’t see it for 24 hours then pull it out in bright sunlight. See anything wrong? No. Time to glass.
The best way to cover up a bad shape is a good glass job. Since I can’t glass either, I’ve come up with some good tricks for the back yarder…
Much to my surprise, a clear glass job shows more dents, wobbles and divots than you’d expect.
Color is your friend. Swirls, splashes, stripes; the brighter and gaudier the better. Anything to take the viewer’s eyes from that over-worked outline.
Pens and “art” way better than taped or brushed resin pin lines. Make that drunken pinline seem like you did it on purpose. Again, anything to take the eye from your uneven rail bands.
High performance sanded finishes are the kine! Anything remotely polished will reflect all the dips and slabs you made by pouring your hot coat on too thick. You thought you could fill those little wows with resin didn’t you!
Don’t post any pictures until you’ve waxed 'er up.
When you do take pictures, be sure to be arty and show the board at weird angles so no one can see the real outline shape. Lots of closeups of your signature and the board number, maybe the fin box if you managed to put that in right.
Take it out and surf the buggah. You’ll realize that anything you couldn’t see in the bright of day won’t affect the ride one iota.
I just realized I owe you a little some something in the mail…my apologies. I’ll throw in a nice rocket twin template this weekend!
I agree. Walk away and come back after a few hours. See what you think of it then.
Even when everybody tells you that they can’t see the flaws that you are gnashing your teeth over, and you KNOW that you’re just obsessing, that craftsman’s attitude of knowing how far you are from perfection will keep you up at night. Never been perfect, never claimed to be.
lol! quote of the year! what a classic description of shaping. i’m only laughing because i can relate.
Really funny topic, and some great responses. But if you do all your obsessing BEFORE the fine-sand, you won’t have to do near as much ‘‘chasing’’ at the end.
At one point in my life I was shaping really good clean boards. Mainly due to the fact that I was doing on the average of 5 per day. It got to a point where I became somewhat jaded …and started to shape my personal boards with very litttle attention to detail. I would blast them out with 40grit scratches,bumps,twists with quickie overnight glass jobs. Some of those ugly bumpy bubbleglass rejects rode amazingly well. My best board ever was twisted like a pretzel. Go figure.
Asymmetrical?
Howzit Mr. Clean, I always thought my boards rode better as they got older and twisted more. I even nicknamed one board the Chubby Checker board.Aloha,Kokua
In the words of Michael Corleone in the God Father as he slams his hand on the table while arguing with Kate…“ENOUGH!”
analysis paralysis
your boards are all time, dude
when you can start to see through them…it’s time to stop.
…I earn my money from building/selling boards so I stop when I reach the industry criteria for my segment
There was an interview with Terry Martin in which he described the streamlining of his process. He learned to follow a specific sequence that was a logical progression of steps.
For most of us it’s simply a matter of tolerances… +/- fractions of an inch. Some hobbyists have a beer and call it “good enough.” Some obsess with the “bad haircut” syndrome and end up with a thinner, perhaps more narrow board than intended. Some, like Terry Martin or any number of experts can whittle down to finished product with a minimum of wasted strokes.
Take heart - pull out a micrometer and even the best aren’t perfect. It isn’t rocket science where .0001" tolerances might be specified. It’s likely gonna get all dented and dinged up pretty quick anyway.